Chapter 14: Emotions
Compared with people from individualistic societies, people in collectivistic cultures showed a higher correlation between life-satisfaction scores and _____
Being respected by others for living up to cultural norms.
Hostile tendencies may/are related to ____
Cardiovascular disease
Who was one of the first scientists to seriously consider whether emotional facial expressions were common across all people of the world? How did she/he study this?
Charles Darwin. Looked at our closest genetic relatives, chimpanzees. Various primates made some strikingly similar emotional expressions that humans made, like when in a placid state, when happy about being caressed, and when disappointed and sulky. This is suggestive that our capacity to express some particular emotions through our faces has been around for some time, at least since the time that chimpanzees and humans shared a common ancestor.
Who are our closest genetic relatives?
Chimpanzees
What appears to be the basis of a good life in collectivistic cultures.
Living up to cultural norms
Acute Mediterranean syndrome (AMS)
Refers to the observations of some ER personnel that people from many Mediterranean cultures communicate their discomfort and pain at several decibels louder than those from many other cultures. For example, in one study, 57% of Italians reported being in pain in contrast to only 33% of the Irish. Those of Italian and Jewish backgrounds communicated their pain much more openly than those of Irish and Anglo backgrounds, although some kinds of measures of pain don't reveal consistent cultural differences.
What is some evidence to support the fact that our facial expressions are often reflexive?
Same facial expressions that adults make are made by very young infants, including those born blind who have never seen those expressions before
Who scores highest on subjective well-being?
Scandinavian and Nordic countries, much of Latin America, various English-speaking countries, and Western Europe
What is the best-known example of a word that doesn't have any equivalent in English that nonetheless reflect feelings English speakers are probably familiar with?
Schadenfreude
Facial feedback hypothesis
The notion that facial expressions influence emotional experience
What did a well-known study about the facial feedback hypothesis find?
The people with the pen in their teeth found cartoons to be more amusing than those who had the pen in their lips.
Who are some of the least satisfied people in the world for subjective well-being (I think)?
Those in Bangladesh and Cameroon (not much access to wealth to meet basic needs)
The task of judging the emotions by just looking at eyes is used as part of a tool for what?
To diagnose people with autism.
Americans and Indians both recognize the photo on the left as a prototypical embarrassment display. However, only people in India recognize the photo on the right as a ritualized display of embarrassment. What is shown on the right?
Tongue bite: an expression that is voluntarily produced
Describe Paul Ekman and colleagues' studies and their findings.
Took thousands of people with the following expressions: disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise. Reduced set to those most easily recognized by Americans and showed to individuals in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Japan, and the US. Participants were asked to select which of a set of six emotion terms best matched the feeling the person was showing in a photo. Participants tended to identify the emotion correctly in 80-90% of the photos.
Liget
o A key emotion in the life of the Ilongot, an indigenous hunting and gathering tribe that lives in the Northern Philippines. o "Anger," "passion," and "energy." Experienced when one is insulted, disappointed, irritated, but especially when one is envious of another. It can be aroused by all-night songfests, pride of accomplishments, various magic rituals, or the death of a loved one. Allows a person to work in the fields all day or climb high in the trees. Helps people have the motivation to work. o Believed to be concentrated in the semen, so more common among men, but women cat feel liget at times. Primarily possessed by striving youths, energetic hunters, and violent men. Until the 1970s, the most dramatic demonstration of liget occurred in the Ilongot's head-hunting rituals (would toss severed victim's head high into the air).
What are some findings from the Natyashastra?
o An Indian treatise of emotion that was written in the second century MP. Shows us the problem with defining the six basic emotions with English words. o List of 8 basic emotions. Didn't include words that corresponded to basic emotions of happiness or surprise. Didn't overlap with other contenders for basic emotions, like pride, embarrassment, shame, interest, or contempt. Included four other emotions: love, amusement, enthusiasm, wonder.
What did a study find in which American and Japanese participants were asked to view some highly stressful films, such as a disturbing clip of a circumcision ritual?
o Camera recorded their facial expressions (unbeknown to them) o Conditions: alone, older experimenter sitting beside them observing them o Alone: made similar facial expressions o Older experimenter: Americans - similar facial expressions as when alone, Japanese - tended to smile or hide their feelings of disgust with their hands throughout much of the films
Which group has only eight emotion words? Which map onto Ekman's basic emotions?
o Chewong of Malaysia (note: 8 emotion words) o Anger, fear, shame
What part of the body should you look at for Japanese? For Americans?
o Eyes (more difficult to control the emotions around the eyes); mouth (expecting that people are accurately broadcasting their emotions) o This may be why anime characters have larger eyes than mouths.
What did a study find in which Russians and Americans were asked to read some vignettes about a target who had done something to make her feel upset?
o In one of the vignettes, the target analyzes her feeling about why she's upset, whereas in the others she doesn't analyze her feelings. o Russians: more likely to identify with target who reflected on her feeing than Americans (Russian brooder stereotype) o Americans: those who identified with self-reflective target were more depressed than those who did not identify with the target (for Russians, there was an opposite trend) o Wallowing in one's negative self-feelings has different effects?
The English language has more than _____ different emotion words.
2000
Approximately ___ of Americans and ___ of Canadians report being quite happy, and these numbers have remained fairly constant over the past ___ years.
89%; 85%; 60
Iklas
A Javanese term that refers to somewhat pleasant feelings of frustration
Two-factor theory of emotions
A theory that maintains that emotions are primarily our interpretations of physiological responses to stimuli. The name comes from the physiological signals + the interpretation (2 factors). The physiological sign may be a pounding heart, but it can be interpreted as fear or love, depending on the situation.
James-Lange theory of emotions
A theory that maintains that emotions are primarily perceptions of physiological responses to stimuli. Someone going for a hike comes across a bear. James: our emotions are the physiological responses to stimuli in our world. Each emotion word we have is the description of a different bodily state. Carl Lange: these physiological responses are products of our autonomic nervous system (changes in heart rate, breathing, pupil dilation, tear secretion, blood flow to skin, stomach contractions). This theory states that our bodies respond to stimuli in a way so as to facilitate survival.
How did Walter Cannon criticize the James-Lang theory?
Autonomic nervous system is too clumsy and slow and too simple and ponderous a system.
What type of American and Taiwanese faces are likely to be shown in children's storybooks?
American faces showed feelings of excitement and had significantly bigger smiles than the Taiwanese faces
What did a study about emotions and American preschool children versus Taiwanese preschoolers find?
American preschool children preferred pictures of excited faces more than the Taiwanese preschoolers, and they also felt more similar to the characters who were engaged in high-arousal activities; the Taiwanese children felt more similar to the characters engaged in low-arousal activities.
What did a study about the facial feedback hypothesis find when Japanese and American participants were asked to report on occasions when they had experienced certain emotions?
Americans reported feeling those emotions longer and more intensely than the Japanese.
What theory do European-Americans appear to have about life? What about Asian-Americans?
An implicit theory that they should be happy; emotional experience, like other aspects of life, should be balanced and consist of both positive and negative experiences
People from what type of cultures tend to have more restrained emotional expressions than what type of culture? Remember: there are several exceptions.
Collectivistic cultures; individualistic cultures
When did happiness begin to be believed to be achievable through efforts to pursue a good life?
Enlightenment, when the world began to be seen as a more rational and predictable place.
What might explain some of the cultural differences in subjective well-being?
Different theories that people from different cultures have about how they should be feeling about their lives.
How has James's theory of emotions been expanded?
Emotions aren't just physiological experiences, but also include appraisals, nonverbal expressions, neural patterns, and subjective feelings.
How do European-Americans and Asian-Americans differ in the pastimes they choose?
European-Americans are more likely to engage in active individual activities such as jogging or rollerblading, whereas Asian-Americans are more likely to engage in passive activities such as sightseeing and picnicking.
American (European-American; Asian-American) participants were asked to complete a brief questionnaire at the end of every day to indicate how satisfied they had been that day. After doing this for 7 days, participants were also asked to indicate how satisfied they had been with that week. What are the results?
European-Americans remembered having a much better week than the Asian-Americans. However, there was no cultural difference in how positively the participants rated their satisfaction each day of the week. It seems that when reflecting on a longer period, their estimates are reflect more their theories about what life should be like. When considering their feeling at a given time, those theories do not come much into play.
How do European-Americans and Chinese differ in terms of arousal and music?
European-Americans: more likely to prefer fast-tempo and exciting music. Chinese: more likely to prefer calm music.
What was found when European-Canadians were asked to choose university courses from a fictitious set of course descriptions?
European-Canadians were more likely to choose the courses that sounded fun and interesting compared with Asian Canadians, who focused more on the perceived utility of the courses.
When European-Canadians and Asian-Canadians were asked to choose one of two computer games, what were the results?
European-Canadians were more likely to choose the fun game, whereas Asian-Canadians were more likely to choose the useful game that could improve one's thinking skills and boost one's grades.
Ritualized displays
Facial expressions that are expressed in some cultures but not in others as a function of cultural display rules.
Who scores lowest on subjective well-being?
Former Soviet republics, some impoverished countries in African and South Asia
How do emotions and religions relate?
High-arousal states are encouraged more in Christian texts (Gospels of the Bible; contemporary self-help books) whereas low-arousal states are more encouraged in Buddhist texts (Lotus Sutra; self-help books).
At least in North America, happiness is associated with ____
Increased longevity and career success
Which theory of emotion suggests an evolutionary origin to human emotions?
James-Lange theory (biological machinery must have been assembled through evolution).
What are findings in terms of how Japanese and American Olympic athletes?
Japanese athletes are more likely than their American counterparts to discuss their relationships when describing their emotions.
Amae
Japanese term that captures the relatively pleasant feelings that one experiences when one is allowed to emphasize his or her dependence on another. It often involves tendencies to behave inappropriately toward a close other, as a gesture to demonstrate how secure the relationship is.
What did a study find when participants who read athlete's self-descriptions were asked to infer the emotions that the athlete was feeling?
Japanese: inferred more emotions when the athlete mentioned relationships. American participants: inferred more emotions when the athlete focused only on herself. For Japanese, emotions are experienced more as interpersonal states that connect people to each other, whereas for Americans, emotions are experienced more as personal states that lie within individuals.
____ people are more likely to conceal emotions, specifically those that are _____
Japanese; potentially disruptive. They present a more neutral or pleasant face than Americans.
How do Latin Americans differ in terms of arousal and emotions?
Latin Americans: prefer high-arousal positive emotions at least as much (if not more than) Canadians or Americans
European-Americans who report experiencing many positive emotions report experiencing more/less depression. How do those in East Asia compare?
Less; no less at risk for depression than those East Asians who report having very few positive emotions
Cultural differences in pain expression appear to be more pronounced among ____ patients than among ____ ones.
Older; younger
Who have studied the following question the most: Do humans from all over the world, who share the same distant ancestor, express their emotions in similar ways?
Paul Ekman and colleages
In general, theories that focus on ____ of emotions predict less cultural variability, and theories that focus on _______ of emotions expect much cultural variability.
Physiological aspects; interpretive aspects
Americans are more likely to seek out what kind of emotions? What about East Asians?
Positive emotions high in arousal compared with those low in arousal. Prefer low arousal emotions over high-arousal ones.
What appears to be seen as the basis of a good life in individualistic cultures?
Positive emotions. People in individualistic societies were far more likely than those in collectivistic societies to base their life satisfaction on how many positive emotions they were experiencing.
What is some evidence that supports the James-Lange theory?
Some research has identified distinctive physiological patterns that correspond to certain emotions. However, other surveys of the literature question the specificity of these physiological patterns. Research reveals that there are distinctive physiological patterns of emotions that are similar among people from diverse cultural backgrounds (supports evolutionary basis of this theory).
Who proposed the two-factor theory of emotion?
Stanley Schacter and Jerome Singer
What does a study comparing Surinamese and Turkish immigrants to Holland (collectivistic culture) and mainstream Dutch citizens (individualistic) find about cultural variation in kinds of emotional experiences?
Surinamese and Turks: expressed more relational concerns and attended more closely to how situations affected others, compared with the Dutch. Were more likely to ensure that others attended to the same events, thereby sharing the experience with the participants. This suggests that the emotional experiences of those who are more interdependent are more interpersonally engaged than those experiences among more independent individuals.
Display rules
The culturally specific rules that govern which facial expressions are appropriate in a given situation and how intensely they should be exhibited. This theory maintains that the experience of the basic emotions is more or less constant across cultures, although cultures vary in how they choose to display those facial emotions.
Anna Wierzbicka calls our attention to what?
The fact that all the basic emotions have a clear English label. Moreover, many other languages don't have labels that correspond to some of these so-called basic emotions. For example, there's no single Polish word that covers the same breadth as the English word of "disgust" does.
Subjective well-being
The feeling of how satisfied one is with his/her life.
Which theory of emotion suggests that our emotions are grounded in the belief systems, which are influenced by culture, that shape our interpretations?
Two-factor theory of emotions.
The study of emotions began with whom?
William James (1950 and 1890)
Remember: although emotions are perceived as central to the human experience, describing them is not straightforward. Controversy exists regarding similarities and differences of people's emotional experiences and is based on the disagreement about how we can define emotions in the first place.
Y
What did a study find when Japanese and American students completed a questionnaire a number of times per day over a week to indicate the emotions they had been experiencing?
o Japanese were about 3 x as likely to report that they had not been feeling any emotions. Thus, the cultural display rules governing the masking and deamplifying of emotions might be leading Japanese to experience fewer and less intense emotions. o Japanese participants reported that they felt about the same amount of positive and negative feelings. American participants reported that they experienced far more positive emotions than negative ones. Americans and Japanese reported experiencing about the same number of negative emotions, but Americans reported experiencing far more positive emotions than Japanese.
What are some words that don't have an equivalent in English that reflect feelings English speakers would be less familiar with?
o Liget o Javanese term: iklas o Japanese term: amae
Which cultures encourage people to display their emotions in clear, if not exaggerated, form?
o Men in Arab populations o Kaluli of New Guinea
What did a study find about subjective well-being when comparing people from different regions of the US?
o New England, the Mountain states, West South Central US, West North Central US, and East South Central US? o Evaluated well-being in terms of health, sense of autonomy, satisfaction with their identities, emotions, relations with others, and sense of social responsibility o People in New England and the Mountain states, on average, fared better on most domains than people from other regions.
What are the two aspects of emotions that have received the most study?
o Objectively visible aspect: facial expressions o Subjectively experienced aspect: people's descriptions of their emotional experiences
What did a study find about engaged and disengaged emotions?
o People were provided with a number of emotions that varied on two dimensions and asked how often they experienced them. One dimension: engaged or disengaged—that is, whether the experience involved connecting with others or distinguishing oneself from others. Engaged emotions have to do with focusing on how emotional experiences lead people to connect with others. The other dimension: positive or negative o Examples: positive interpersonally engaged emotions = respect, shitashimi (friendly feelings), positive interpersonally disengaged emotions = proud, yuetsukan (superior), negative interpersonally engaged emotions = ashamed, oime (indebted), negative interpersonally disengaged emotions = anger, futekusare (sulky feelings) o Findings: Japanese who reported feeling a great deal of positive interpersonally engaged emotions reported a lot more positive feelings in general. However, Americans who reported feeling a great deal of positive interpersonally disengaged emotions reported much more positive feelings in general. The positive interpersonally disengaged emotions for Japanese and the positive interpersonally engaged emotions for Americans were not closely tied to general positive feelings.
What are some possible universals in this chapter along with their caveats?
o Recognition and production of facial expressions (made by young infants and those born blind) = reflexive • No evidence for an accessibility universal, though, even if it's a universal (perform worse when evaluating facial expressions of those from other cultures than their own). Looking at emotional experience, there is more evidence of cultural diversity. People from different cultures vary in intensity, the kinds of things they feel best about, the degree to which they experience positive versus negative emotions, and they use different words to describe different emotional experiences, and the number of these emotional words differs. o The following emotions, at least according to facial expression: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise (ADFHSS) o Expression of pride is universally recognized, but unlike the six basic emotions, the pride expression involves the whole body; it incorporates an erect posture, with the head tilted back, a slight smile on the face, and arms extending away from the body or held akimbo
Describe the research behind and findings with cardiovascular disease and hostile tendencies.
o Research with Westerners has revealed that people with hostile tendencies are at increased risk for cardiovascular disease possibly because hostile people have more occasions when they need to inhibit their anger. The suppression of the anger response may result in less cardiac regulation of heart rate, and thus a slower recovery of the heart rate following an initial angering event. o Chinese-Canadians and European-Canadians: provided with some scenarios like going to a restaurant where the food is superb and prices are low, but the service is terrible. Chinese-Canadians, on average: found scenarios to be less anger-provoking than European-Canadians. Most common response to anger-provoking event was to reappraise the situation in a less angry way or make efforts to distract themselves from the anger-provoking event. European-Canadians: most common response to the anger-provoking event was to openly express their anger. o Another study: European-Canadians and Chinese-Canadians -were exposed to a rather rude and unprofessional experimenter. People from both cultural groups initially responded with similar degrees of anger (measured by a self-report questionnaire and blood pressure). Both showed an initial jump in their systolic blood pressure (indicates an anger response). Blood pressure then slowly dropped back down to baseline levels. Blood pressure of Chinese-Canadians recovered to baseline levels significantly more quickly than the blood pressure of European-Canadians, even though none of the participants openly expressed their anger to the experimenter. o From this study, it seems that inhibiting their anger led to a slower recovery of blood pressure for European-Canadians than for Chinese-Canadians. Thus, European-Canadians suffered from physiological consequences if they didn't openly express their anger.
What did a study find in which Japanese and Americans were shown photos of people's facial expressions in which the top half of the photos showed a different emotional expression than the bottom half? They were asked to decide what emotion the target person was expressing. What did another study find?
o The Japanese judgments were more influenced by the top half of the photos (eyes) than the judgments of the Americans, and the judgments of the Americans were more influenced by the bottom half of the photos. o Europeans judged facial expressions by attending to both the eyes and the mouth, whereas East Asians attended mostly to the eyes.
What are some findings and arguments that don't support Ekman and colleagues' findings?
o The five cultures they explored were all industrialized, literature cultures, and people from them had all been exposed to a lot of the same media images. However, Ekman did find that the Fore of the inner highlands of New Guinea did show these same expressions when asked to show the emotion they would show for different stories ("Your friend has come, and you are happy."). o Success rates for identifying American-posed faces was best for Americans and better among English speakers than among other Indo-European language speakers (Swedish, Greek, Spanish), who performed better than non-Indo-European speakers (Japanese, Turkish, Malaysian), who performed better than those from preliterate societies (Fore and Dani from New Guinea). However, all groups performed significantly better than chance. o People were about 9% more accurate in judging the facial expressions of people from their own culture than those of another culture with people showing about 58% accuracy overall. o When showing people's eyes, people do better when the target is from their own culture than from another. o People show a stronger fear response (greater activation in their amygdala) when looking at fear faces from their own culture o People can reliability guess the nationality of targets who are expressing emotions, even when the targets are of fairly similar cultural backgrounds. Americans can guess better than chance whether the person is Australian or American or whether they're Japanese or Japanese-American. This only occurs when the target is expressing an emotion. Thus, maybe emotions aren't exactly totally universal because maybe people from different nationalities make different faces, or maybe we're just better at discriminating faces when we see expressions. o People conceal their emotions differently or at least more or less o Cultures have different display rules (however, Ekman and colleagues say that these vary) and different ritualized displays o Systolic blood pressure and emotions (may physiologically experience anger more - both Chinese-Canadians and European-Canadians had similar initial levels of systolic blood pressure o Emotion terms not found in some cultures but found in others • Some researchers argue that the diversity in emotion terms is relatively meaningless because our language use doesn't affect our underlying psychological experience. That is, whether this diversity in terms is captured in people's own thoughts and internal states remains debatable.
What are different findings about wealth and life satisfaction?
o Those in Bangladesh and Cameroon (not much access to wealth to meet basic needs) were some of least satisfied o Correlation of .45 between income and life satisfaction in the slums of Calcutta o On average, once a country has an average GDP of at least 40% of that of the US, there is no longer any pronounced relation between money and subjective well-being.
Describe Schacter and Singer's study and their findings.
o To separate their participants' interpretations from the source of their arousal: "euphoria" condition → questionnaire while confederate played with props, like shooting wads of paper at the participant with a slingshot, trying to get the participant giddy; "anger" condition → questionnaire, confederate was to get participant to join him in expressing his frustration and outrage at the rudeness of the items in the questionnaire, the questionnaire helped the confederate do this because it included a list of rather insulting items; three other conditions (manipulating amount of physiological arousal) placebo condition → saline and told they wouldn't have any side effects on their state of arousal; epinephrine-informed condition → injection of epinephrine and told that the injection would cause arousal to increase; epinephrine-uninformed condition; epinephrine-misinformed condition (run only with participants in the euphoria condition) → told that epinephrine would decrease arousal. Emotion was studied by having participants indicate their feelings on a questionnaire and having hidden observers note the facial expressions the participants were making. o Results: somewhat complicated. In the epinephrine-misinformed and epinephrine-uninformed condition, participants were feeling a great deal of arousal but had no good explanation for it, so they came to interpret their arousal by looking to the situation they were in. Strongest emotions were among these two groups in the euphoria condition and in the epinephrine-uninformed condition for the anger condition (no condition of epinephrine-misinformed for anger). The same physiological information was interpreted as either euphoria or anger, thus supporting this theory. Relatively little anger and euphoria for the placebo and epinephrine-informed condition.
Which cultures encourage people to express their emotions in muted form, or to conceal them altogether?
o Utku Eskimos, especially the emotion of anger o Balinese (positive and negative emotions)
What are the different factors that contribute to influence the overall satisfaction that people have with their lives?
o Wealth: having access to enough wealth to easily meet their basic needs of life. o Human rights: countries that promote human rights the most tend to have the happiest citizens o Overall equality among people in a country
